The Twilight World
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  • Published: 5 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847927231
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $35.00
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The Twilight World

Discover the first novel from the iconic filmmaker Werner Herzog

Formats & editions
Hardback
5 Jul 2022
Audiobook
7 Jul 2022
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An extraordinary and captivating story told in exquisite prose; this is the unmade documentary from the pioneer and legendary filmmaker who brought us the mutli-award-winning Grizzly Man

The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda's long war.

At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army's return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda's long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades-until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.

In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda's years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style-part documentary, part poem, and part dream-that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.
  • Published: 5 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847927231
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a
remote mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in
Munich and Pittsburgh.
He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced,
written, and directed more than fifty feature- and documentary films, such as
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972), NOSFERATU (1978),
FITZCARRALDO (1982), LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992), LITTLE DIETER
NEEDS TO FLY (1997), MY BEST FIEND (1999), INVINCIBLE (2000),
GRIZZLY MAN (2005), ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007)
or CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2011).
Werner Herzog has published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed
as many operas.
Werner Herzog lives in Munich and Los Angeles.

portrait photo of Werner Herzog

Also by Werner Herzog

Every Man for Himself and God against All
Of Walking In Ice
See all

Praise for The Twilight World

(praise for Of Walking In Ice:) Herzog's existential journey through a hostile winter landscape is one of the great modern pilgrimages - a record of physical suffering, of hallucination and ecstatic revelation, of portents and animals, of the wreckage of history and myth. Of Walking in Ice has the eerie power of the best fairytales. It hits you with the force of dreams and leaves you with the taste of snow-filled air

Helen MacDonald, author H is for Hawk

(praise for Of Walking In Ice:) Surely the strangest, strongest walking book I know, it tells the story of a winter pilgrimage, made in desperation and in hope. At once a diary, a blizzard of weather and memories, and the record of a ritual: only Herzog could have written this weird, slender classic

Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

(Praise for Conquest of the Useless:) Hypnotic... Any book by Mr. Herzog...turns his devotees into cryptographers. It is ever tempting to try to fathom his restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate

New York Times

The Twilight World...is very cinematic: indeed, it feels like a film unspooling inside Herzog's head as you read

Daily Telegraph

Beautiful... Nobody else could have written The Twilight World. It is pure Herzog

Sunday Times

Herzog's writing bristles with the same eerie and uncompromising energy as his films. His jungle pulses with hallucinatory life

Guardian

Herzog's skills as a filmmaker and dramatist serve the narrative well... In spare, elegant prose, he analyses how isolation effects Onoda... The Twilight World is an austere book, and a wise one

Literary Review

This is Herzog's debut novel - and it is beautifully crafted, a literary jewel set to sparkle against the backdrop of his monumental career in cinema

i

Herzog...brilliantly blends fact and fiction in this fever dream of a novel, which shimmers with the single-minded strangeness of Onoda's thoughts and feelings

Daily Mail

The true story is extraordinary in its own right, but Herzog's concise yet meandering account of unending loyalty, resilience and desolation transmutes Onoda's personal history into a poetic tragedy

Eastern Daily Press

An enthralling novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery

Mail on Sunday

A mesmerising account

Financial Times

A Hemingway-esque novella

Daily Telegraph